Julie, or the New Heloise

Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Publication Year: 2010

An elegant translation of one of the most popular novels of its time.

Rousseau's great epistolary novel, Julie, or the New Heloise, has been virtually unavailable in English since 1810. In it, Rousseau reconceptualized the relationship of the individual to the collective and articulated a new moral paradigm. The story follows the fates and smoldering passions of Julie d'Etange and St. Preux, a one-time lover who re-enters Julie's life at the invitation of her unsuspecting husband, M. de Wolmar.

The complex tones of this work made it a commercial success and a continental sensation when it first appeared in 1761, and its embodiment of Rousseau's system of thought, in which feelings and intellect are intertwined, redefined the function and form of fiction for decades. As the characters negotiate a complex maze of passion and virtue, their purity of soul and honest morality reveal, as Rousseau writes in his preface, "the subtleties of heart of which this work is full."

A comprehensive introduction and careful annotations make this novel accessible to contemporary readers, both as an embodiment of Rousseau's philosophy and as a portrayal of the tension and power inherent in domestic life.

Cover

Title Page

Contents

Illustrations

Introduction

After the tragic passions that characterized the novels of Mme de Lafayette
in the late seventeenth century and Antoine Prévost in the 1730s and
1740s, many of the most prominent works in France by the mid-eighteenth
century were quintessentially Parisian, featuring wit and elegance. In them
love typically took the form of successive, often furtive affairs. ...

Note on the Translation

Notes on the Text and Engravings

Preface

Great cities must have theaters; and corrupt peoples, Novels. I have
seen the morals of my times, and I have published these letters. Would I
had lived in an age when I should have thrown them into the fire! ...

Preface of the New Heloise or Conversation about Novels between the Editor and a Man of Letters

This Dialogue or supposed Conversation was originally intended to
serve as the Preface to the Letters of the two Lovers.7 But its form and its
length having permitted me to place only an excerpt at the head of the collection,8 I give it here in its entirety, in the hope that the reader will Wnd
some useful views about the purpose of this sort of Writings. ...

Second Preface

Part One

I must flee you, Mademoiselle, that I can see: I should not have waited
nearly so long, or rather it were better never to have laid eyes on you. But
what is to be done at present? How should I go about it? You promised
me friendship; behold my confusion, and counsel me. ...

Part Two

I have taken up the pen a hundred times and put it down again; I hesitate
at the very first word; I know not what tone to adopt; I know not
where to begin; and it is to Julie I mean to write! Wretched me! What has
become of me? That time is then no more when a thousand delightful sentiments
flowed from my pen like an endless torrent! ...

Part Three

What sufferings you inflict on those who love you! What tears you have
already caused to flow in an unfortunate family whose peace you alone
trouble! Beware compounding our tears with mourning: beware lest the
death of an afflicted mother be the ultimate effect of the poison you pour
into her daughter’s heart, ...

Part Four

How long it is taking you to return here! I am not happy with all these
comings and goings. How many hours are wasted getting you to where
you ought always to be, and still worse taking you away! The thought of
seeing each other for such a short time spoils the whole pleasure of being
together. ...

Part Five

Put an end to your childhood, friend, awaken. Do not turn your entire
life over to a long slumber of reason. The years flow by, you have only
enough left for becoming wise. At thirty years past, it is time to give some
thought to oneself; start then to search within yourself, and be a man once
before you die. ...

Part Six

Before leaving Lausanne I must write you a brief word to inform you
that I have arrived here; not however as joyful as I hoped. I was looking
forward with great pleasure to this little trip which has so often tempted
even you; but by refusing to come along you have made it almost a bother
to me; for what comfort will there be in it for me? ...

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